Masks

Robert Greene
He was a boon companion of Peele and a profligate of the vilest type, quite the equal of Peele in evil courses. The date of his birth is not known with certainty. He is said to have been born at Norwich; Dyce places the date at 1550, and Grosart, at 1560. We are told that he entered as a sizar at St. John’s, Cambridge, in 1578, leaving, says Grosart, in 1585. He denominates him a cleric, and red nosed minister, asserting that he was Vicar of Lollesbury, records him as being “incorporated at Oxford 1588.”

He left an autobiographical sketch printed in 1596. In it, after describing some of his villainies he naively says: “Young yet in years, though old in wickedness, I began to resolve that there was nothing bad that was not profitable; where upon I grew so rooted in all mischief, that I had as great a delight in wickedness as sundry have in godliness, and as much felicity I took in villainy as others did in honesty.”

A recent biographer, following for the most part Greene’s own account, says: “That Greene was married is certain, Dyce thinks in 1586, and it is as certain, that although on his own authority his wife was a most amiable and loving woman, he ere long forsook her to indulge without restraint his passion for debauchery and every species of self-indulgence. After leaving his wife, he lived with a woman, the sister of an infamous character, well known then under the name of Cutting Ball, and by her he had a son who died in the year after his father. 1

After leading one of the maddest lives on record, he died a miserable death on the 3rd of September, 1592, his last illness being caused by a debauch. On his deathbed he was deserted by all his former boon companions except his mistress, and was indebted to the wife of a poor shoemaker for the last bed on which he laid his miserable body his dying injunction to his compassionate and admiring hostess being to crown his vain head after death with a garland of bays.

This request, it seems, the poor woman attended to. Yet Grosart was influenced by a single passage in Selimus to accredit it to Greene. This is his remarkable confession: “One specific passage by itself would have determined me as signing Selimus to Greene.” He could have found scores to have warranted him equally in assigning it to Spenser.

A number of works have been assigned him, the authorship of which even his biographers question. Professor Brown declares that “in style, Greene is father of Shakespeare”; that “James IV., is the first Elizabethan historical play outside Shakespeare, and is worthy to be placed on a level with Shakespeare’s earlier style”; and he thinks “Shakespeare followed Greene’s example in the Taming of the Shrew and Midsummer Night’s Dream; Tieck, who translated the Pinner of Wakefield declares it to be “one of Shakespeare’s juvenile productions.”

Christopher Marlowe
Was, if possible, a greater reprobate than his pot-companions, for to his evil accomplishments was added the temper of the bravo. Even less is known about him than of Peele or of Greene. He is said to have been the son of a shoemaker, John Marlowe, born at Canterbury, February, 1563-64, and granted the degree of B.A. in 1585, and M.A. in 1587, at Benet College, Cambridge; went to London shortly after he became an actor, but, it is said, had to resign, having broken his leg “in a lewd scene.” His career was brief, as he died June 1593, a few months after Greene. 2

Thomas Kyd
One of the most lawless assumptions in literary criticism of recent years is the introduction to a patient public of the author of the Shakespeare Works in the role of an understudy to Thomas Kyd. It is an offense that ought to be actionable in any court of good-breeding; yet Lee thrusts “the sportive Kyd” upon our attention with a persistence that finally excites amusement, though our English kinsmen prefer to adjust their monocles and regard the deft showman, as he springs his favourite jack-in-the-box upon them, as they do the perennial suffragette, with evident admiration.

Who is Thomas Kyd? Nobody knew a few years ago, but, to get him into line, a genealogy was fashioned for him which would surprise a trained genealogist like Fitz Waters, or Colonel Chester. It is easy to find a name repeated at any period within a comparatively short range of time. We know that in Warwickshire the Stratford actor had several contemporaries bearing his name, and in Scotland the same may be said of Walter Scott.

Burton
The Anatomy of Melancholy first appeared in 1621 under the pen-name of Democritus, Jr., and contained an Address to the Reader of 72 pages and 783 numbered pages ending with Finis. Bound with it is an Epilogue of six pages unnumbered in which are these words, “The last section shall be mine to cut the strings of Democritus’ vizor, to unmaske and show him as he is.” This is dated, “From my studie in Christ Church, Oxford, December 5, 1620,” and signed Robert Burton. No other edition has these leaves, which do not appear to form any part of the book, but to have been added after printing as an afterthought.

Strangely enough in his Address the author makes this startling statement, “I will yet to satisfie and please myselfe, make an Utopia of mine owne, a new Atlantis, a poetical commonwealth of mine owne, in which I will freely domineere, build cities, make lawes, statues, as I list myself”; which is just what Bacon did not long after in his New Atlantis.

The Anatomy of Melancholy seems to have been the only book published under Burton’s name, though in his will he left his executor to dispose of “all such Books as are written with my own hand.” He also left for disposal “half my Melancholy Copy for Crips hath the other half.”
Crips was the publisher. Was Burton the real author of this work? In the British Museum is a copy of a book published in 1586, entitled A Treatise of Melancholic, by T. Bright. It is noticeable that Bright, who was a writer as well as an M.D., resided at Cambridge in the earlier part of his life, and was an admirer of Lady Burghley, the sister of Lady Bacon. He died in 1615. Burton in sketches of his life is said to have received his inspiration for the Anatomy of Melancholy from him. 3

Burton died in 1640-41. In the Cipher 4 we are told that both Bright and Burton were names under which Bacon wrote, and that the different editions contain different (cipher) stories. At the time the Treatise was published, Burton was but eleven years of age. The inference from this would be that the Treatise was rewritten and enlarged in 1621, and published as the Anatomy of Melancholy under the pseudonym Democritus as Burton’s work, one half of the copyright of which he owned in partnership with the printer.